Lil' Peanut
by AlienZombies
Summary: Young Ellis and his best friend.


Meh. I already posted this on the LJ so it can't hurt to have it here, too.

**Lil' Peanut**

"That's enough of Lil' Peanut. I'm throwin' him away."

Those words were like cold-blooded murder to three-year-old Ellis. He threw himself on the ground in a surprisingly advanced defensive maneuver, clutching his grubby toy to his chest, and heaved a big breath to scream at the top of his lungs. "_You ain't takin' my Peanut_!" he wailed. The tears ran slick and unhindered down his reddening cheeks.

Winnie was unimpressed. She planted her hands on her hips and waited patiently for the tantrum to wane. When Ellis pitched a fit, he burned hot and fast and went out like a grease fire, wisping out into an exhausted, sniffling ragdoll. In a way, she was lucky – though he was explosive, he didn't have those long, bitter, hysterical wars other children could carry on for the span of hours. Ellis would tire out and he would tire out quick.

"El," she said calmly over his passionate shrieks. "Kiddo, look at the thing."

"_He's my Lil' Peanut_!"

"Now, you listen here –"

"_Noooo_!" He slumped over dramatically as if shot. The stuffed peanut compressed against his stomach with a phantom wheeze. It had once squeaked with every hug, though the little plastic piece inside its belly had long been broken.

"Ellis."

He went for the meanest, blackest word he knew. "You're a_ jerk, _Momma!"

"Now, that's not nice." Her patience was wearing thin. Ellis was cranky for a nap, and Winnie badly needed lunch. To make matters worse, a recent rainstorm had flooded the streets and coated everything with a liberal amount of mud three inches high – which was what Ellis had rubbed Lil' Peanut in quite thoroughly, which was why Lil' Peanut had to die.

Ellis had peaked and now he was drained. He lay moaning pitifully on the floor, his ruined toy staining his T-shirt. "He's my best friend," he was whimpering.

"What about Jerry?"

"Ain't the same."

"We'll get you another Lil' Peanut."

"No!" Ellis shrieked. "No! No, it ain't the _same_!"

"You keep mouthin' off, I'll spank you," she threatened, though she had never hit him and could never bring herself to hit him. She babied him far too much – the reason he cried so very often, and would continue to be an easy crier into adulthood.

Her son was quiet now and completely limp as she plucked the toy from his boneless arms. He put his face against the floor and whined softly, but otherwise made no protest.

"Momma's sorry, pun'kin," she said quietly to him, stroking his hair, but he did not answer. He had fallen asleep. With an affectionate sigh, she scooped him up and put him to bed, leaving with the soiled Lil' Peanut in tow.

The thing was properly ugly, she thought as she sat down in the living room couch. When they had first bought it at Whispering Oaks, Lil' Peanut had been covered in a sweet yellow fuzz, but now most of his hair had been rubbed away to reveal his threadbare skin. The fuzz that did remain was stained heavily with dirt, bits of food, juice, and Ellis's sweat and spit and the mark of his illnesses and his healthy days together. And one of Lil' Peanut's poor little eyes had been rubbed nearly clean away, the stitches that made his smiling mouth unwinding. He smelled musky and kind of sour. Lil' Peanut had seen rain and shine, been dragged halfway across the Southern US by his one spindly arm (which was coming unstrung, bleeding white stuffing). Lil' Peanut had been dropped from rooftops, into puddles, into trashcans, thrown across rooms and lost under piles of clothing. Lil' Peanut had seen quite a lot.

Running the blade of her thumb over his uneven surface, Winnie sighed and shook her head. She took Lil' Peanut to the kitchen sink and squirted a handful of dish soap into her palm.

When Ellis woke from his nap, he found his best friend sitting on the kitchen counter next to his sippy cup full of orange juice, and he began to cry with relief. Winnie watched him from where she was filling out a crossword, a big grin on her face.

--

"What's this thing?" Nick asked incredulously, pulling out the ratty toy from the bottom of a plastic bin.

"Don't touch that," Ellis cried instantly, snatching at it from where Nick held it at arm's length. Holding the toy up to his cheek, Ellis gave it an experimental squeeze and found, to his delight, that same asthmatic wheeze. "Aww, shit. I thought I'd lost this little guy for good…"

"You _want _that thing?" Nick wrinkled his nose.

"Course I do!"

"It smells like shit. It's falling apart."

"Don't make fun of Lil' Peanut," Ellis said placidly as he gingerly placed Lil' Peanut in an open box. It had been a long day packing up those old things he still wanted to bring with him to their new home in the west. They had stopped burning cities for quarantine about twenty miles north of Georgia's border, and it made him nervous that he might have lost some of these memories – scrapbooks, yearbooks, letters, his mother's necklace – might have been lost forever. In the long five years spent in the evacuation and quarantine camps, it seemed an unspoken horror to think he might have been oblivious while his childhood home burned to the ground.

Nick was watching him warily from where he was rummaging through the plastic bin. "Are you sure?"

Ellis shook his head to clear it, throwing a tired smile over his shoulder. "Positive."

"Well…" Nick hesitated, as if weighing his natural urge to be selfish against his natural urge to spoil Ellis. "Fine, I guess. As long as you don't fucking put it on our bed."

"That's fine," Ellis answered, feeling the telltale sting of joyful tears; he closed up the box and went back to work.

After another ten minutes of rummaging around in molded cardboard boxes and plastic bins, Ellis's voice cut the silence. "Oh my god, _Crocodile Chuck_!"

"_No_, Ellis."

-- fin


End file.
